Can Japan assimilate its immigrants?
By Arudou Debito With the recent ethnic riots in France, The Economist (London) ran a thoughtful article (“Minority Reports”) on their causes. It posed an important question: Why are some countries able to assimilate immigrants and their children more peacefully than others? It took a stab at comparing “integrationist” vs. “assimilationist” public policies in France, England, Germany, Holland, and the United States. Naturally, the article did not mention Japan, as Japan does not have much of a record regarding immigration. Registered foreigners (i.e. those with legal visas staying for more than three months), assuming previous growth rates continued through 2005, probably topped two million for the first time in postwar Japan. However, in a country of 127.7 million, this amounts to 1.6% of the total population–slender compared to 4.6% (2003) in Britain, 5.5% (1999) in France, 9.7% (2002) in Germany, 12.1% (2005, legal and illegal) in the US, and 21.8% (2001) in Australia. [1] However,
